


distance and a certain light

by Damkianna



Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Self-Discovery, Taoism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2015-04-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3837943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The third daughter of General Yan is accepted as a fourth-rank wife to His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years Ming Tzu with very little fanfare. (Backstory fic, aka: how Lao Ma learned to stop worrying and develop telekinesis.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	distance and a certain light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



> I wrote your other gift first, LittleRaven, and then was afraid it might be too depressing—so I wrote you another! (Which somehow managed to be longer?) Hopefully at least one of these will hit the spot. ♥
> 
> Standard Xena-universe note: this draws on actual historical/cultural details here and there but is in no way trying to be an accurate portrayal of ancient China, because ... well, Xena. Copious references to Taoism are copious, though, again, this is not intended as a thorough, nuanced examination of real-world Taoism; anything Lao Ma is mentioned as having written down, or anything that seems especially insightful, is probably paraphrased from the 道德经/Dao De Jing, specifically [this translation](http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm). Title's from the poem [Distance and a Certain Light](http://rachaelmarierenton.blogspot.com/2013/06/distance-and-certain-light-may-swenson.html), by May Swenson.

  


  


The third daughter of General Yan is accepted as a fourth-rank wife to His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years Ming Tzu with very little fanfare. She is brought to the palace like the rest of the candidates, her date and place of birth carefully examined by court astrologers and numerologists, her body—clothed and unclothed—inspected with equal care by royal physicians and ministers. No deformities are discovered, no blemishes revealed; there is no ill luck hiding in the confluence of the stars over the city where she first drew breath, or in the direction that place lies in when faced from the walls of the capital. (To the northeast. The land between the palace and the city of Weitao is composed of gently rolling hills, farmland, a few slow rivers—this is a good sign.)

Lao Ma waits through it all with her eyes down, her gaze directed toward the floor. She has been told the truths of her life so many times it feels as though her bones are made out of them: a good Ming woman is humble, self-effacing, quiet, obedient. A good Ming woman knows her place. A good Ming woman understands her worth—understands that it is negligible, unless her face and body are compelling enough that men decide she is valuable. Negligible, unless she proves capable of bearing sons, who will grow up tall and strong and one day win this endless war with Lao.

Men win wars, build kingdoms, change worlds. Women keep their eyes down. These truths are unshakable in the realm of Ming Tzu. Violence is power and power is violence, and women do not have access to either.

Lao Ma is powerless and knows it, and keeps her eyes down.

  


*

  


Lao Ma is not the only fourth-rank wife of His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years Ming Tzu. There is Fei-qian, who is slim and graceful and haughty, gaze cool and hard like jade; there is Yi Mei, quiet and doe-eyed, with a round pale face and narrow soft hands. There is Jang, who is clever and sharp-tongued, paint on her mouth and lacquer on her nails, so bright and relentless that it is sometimes hard to look at her.

And there is Wu Liao. Wu Liao is older than the rest of them, with a quiet dignity Lao Ma envies helplessly. Lao Ma has been told what is expected of her, what standards must govern her behavior in the women's palace, and she listened and bowed and pressed her face to the floor—and then she lay awake in the chamber that was hers now, alone in the dark, and shook. She has also been told the stories of unlucky or disobedient wives—of the unlucky and disobedient wives of His Glorious Highness in particular. But it is difficult for Lao Ma to imagine that Wu Liao's steady hands have ever trembled. Perhaps one day—

(if she does not falter in her duties as wife, if she is not caught trying to escape over the garden wall, if she is not so unlucky as to bear His Glorious Highness a son whose sickliness or death in childbirth indicates some secret disloyalty, some hidden flaw—or, worse, if she bears only daughters. If she lives long enough to match Wu Liao, if she is not locked in a chest to suffocate or hunted down by palace dogs or beaten to death)

—perhaps one day, Lao Ma will learn this same calm, this same steadiness.

What else is there to hope for?

  


* * *

  


It has been only a month when the fourth-rank wives of His Glorious Highness are called upon to present themselves formally. There is to be a banquet, a festival day, and—so it has been decided—the fourth-rank wives of His Glorious Highness will dance.

A dancing master is sent to prepare them. Fei-qian is the best of them; Yi Mei is not without grace, and Wu Liao is slow but rarely errs. Lao Ma does well: she has never danced any dance so complicated as this, but she gives the dancing master cause to slap her only twice.

And Jang—Jang is careless, wild, does everything too fast; but she is not slapped. The first day, the dancing master scolds her and she laughs, compliments his diligence and lowers her eyes. They will dance in a formation, Fei-qian at the prow of it, Lao Ma and Jang forming its flanks, and halfway through the day the dancing master reorders them, placing Jang nearest him and Lao Ma on the other side. Jang laughs again behind her sleeve, eyes dark and gleaming, and when she steps sideways too far toward the dancing master, he does not push her back into her place.

The day after that, the dancing master moves Fei-qian to a flank, and Jang to the prow—though Jang's dancing is not any better. Lao Ma would be embarrassed, to be placed at the center of attention when her talent cannot bear up beneath the scrutiny of it; but the flush of satisfaction on Jang's face says she does not mind.

Lao Ma admires Wu Liao, envies Fei-qian's cool dignity, has a sweet younger cousin who is very like Yi Mei; but she has never met a woman like Jang. She _wanted_ to be placed in first position, Lao Ma thinks, wanted it and _got_ it—and isn't that what power is? Lao Ma had not thought it possible for a woman in the kingdom of Ming, but Jang has proven her wrong.

  


*

  


Lao Ma watches Jang after that, helpless with curiosity. She does not expect anyone to notice; she does not know anyone has until the day of the festival.

Because this festival is held in the court of His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years Ming Tzu, everything is lavishly beautiful, without compare. Red lanterns shaped like lotus flowers hang between banners of embroidered silk throughout the palace courtyards, incense heavy and sweet in the air, and the petals of pear blossoms are brought to scatter over the ground, thick as snow.

And, because this festival is held in the court of His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years Ming Tzu, it opens, celebratory, with the excruciating deaths of four men who are unlucky enough—

(except she should not think of it in terms of luck; if they displeased Ming Tzu, they are incompetent, scheming, traitorous, a threat to the kingdom's harmony. If they displeased Ming Tzu, they deserve it, or it would not happen—and if Lao Ma should fail to believe that, she herself will one day open a festival)

—to merit it.

The wives of His Glorious Highness do not watch the executions, but they are not so far away that they cannot hear. In their dancing costumes, faces painted, they avoid each other's eyes and pretend they are not straining to listen to the muffled declarations by the court official presiding—the disapproving murmur of those in attendance as crimes against His Glorious Highness are listed off one at a time—a faint low voice that could perhaps be imagined to be pleading—

As has become her recourse, Lao Ma glances sideways at Jang, who is gazing off toward the far wall with a graceful curve of her neck: as though it is not the same blank sandalwood that always surrounds them in the women's palace, as though she is a girl in a poem and the moon is rising there.

"If you are wise, you will not choose to look for an example in her."

Lao Ma blinks and turns.

Wu Liao is there, standing quietly with her hands tucked into her sleeves. Jang wears the paint on her face like it is not paint, like it is part of her; Wu Liao wears hers like it is not there at all.

"I do not—"

"Look for something, if it pleases you," Wu Liao says. "It must, for I have seen you. But not an example. That would be foolish, and you must not be foolish here, Lao Ma."

Lao Ma stares at Wu Liao and cannot figure out what to say. There is so much she wishes to express, and yet she can find no words for it all, and could not speak them even if she did: how afraid she is, how little she feels she belongs to herself, how dearly she wishes otherwise—and how unafraid Jang seems, how easy it is for Jang to do as she pleases and how much Lao Ma wants to understand what secret it is that Jang knows that makes this so.

She is silent, but Wu Liao hears her anyway: her face changes, and she looks suddenly tired. "You hear it, out there," Wu Liao says, very low. "The—arrangement Jang made with the dancing master: what do you think will happen to her, if her actions are discovered?"

"But," Lao Ma says, struggling; she understands what Wu Liao means, she was given many dire warnings herself about misconduct in the women's palace, and yet Jang seems so untouchable, so capable— "But she got what she wanted—"

"Yes," Wu Liao agrees. "She wanted, and the dancing master could see it. The dancing master wanted, and Jang could see it. And they got what they wanted from each other, and perhaps they will be glad for a little while; but now they are both in danger." She pauses, looking at Lao Ma carefully, and then shakes her head. "You think Jang has found a way to be powerful. But tell me, Lao Ma: what do I want?"

Lao Ma blinks again, thrown. "What do you—I—I do not know."

"If you wanted something from me," Wu Liao says, "how would you get it?"

"I do not know," Lao Ma admits. "I—I would ask, or—offer—"

"Offer a great deal, perhaps," Wu Liao says, "not knowing what might tempt me; and then I would know all you felt you had to give. Perhaps I would take more than you could afford. Perhaps I would simply refuse you, and wait for you to ask again and offer more. If you wanted something that could cause trouble, or offered me something you should not possess, perhaps I would tell the matron—and what would you do about it?"

Lao Ma looks at Wu Liao and is silent; and that, at last, makes Wu Liao's face ease.

"You begin to understand now," she murmurs. "I tell you this because no one told me, Lao Ma: if you wish to survive in this place, you must never, ever let anyone learn what it is that you want."

  


*

  


Lao Ma thinks about what Wu Liao has said while they wait; and when they are fetched at last to begin their dance; and while she stands, head bowed, arms raised and still, waiting for the first notes of the guqin. The music begins, and they dance the dance they have been taught, the dance Lao Ma now knows so well she could dance it asleep. At the prow of their formation, Jang is wild and bright—and careless, Lao Ma thinks, careless in more ways than one. For the first time, Lao Ma looks past Jang, watches the faces of the third-rank wives seated beyond, the court officials. Lao Ma had not been wrong: Jang's dancing is not better than Fei-qian's, and—

And they can see it, Lao Ma thinks. They can all see it. They do not know the sly way she looked sideways at the dancing master, they were not there to watch the way his hands lingered on her arms when he reached out to correct her; but they see it anyway. All the court can look and know what Jang wanted, can guess she must have done _something_ to get it, and if they find out what and why and how, they can hurt her with it.

_Never, ever let anyone learn what it is that you want._

  


* * *

  


So: violence is power and power is violence. Lao Ma was not wrong about that—no one governed by the august rule of His Glorious Highness would doubt it.

But there is perhaps another kind, a subtler kind, that Wu Liao has learned to wield: knowing what people want, and what they will do to get it. And that kind, Lao Ma thinks, can be wielded by anyone, _against_ anyone; except, of course, that Lao Ma had not been able to turn it back upon Wu Liao. Wu Liao did not lie: to hide your wants, that is the key. So, then, Lao Ma must learn to conceal it. All of it, from an idle desire for another wife's jewelry—for if she looks too long, she will be judged greedy, and an accusation of thievery might be believed—to how dearly she wishes to be free of this place, and everything in between.

Exhausting—but the fates of some of the other wives of His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years are not secret. Lao Ma has heard the stories. Better the never-ending labor of concealment, the paranoia, the distrust, if that is what it takes to live. But, oh, Lao Ma thinks with a grim sort of whimsy, how much easier it would be if she could only learn not to want anything at all!

That is where it starts.

  


*

  


The idea, idle as it was, does not leave her—she cannot stop wondering what it would be like, whether it is possible at all. She cannot stop wondering; and she will not know the answer unless she tries.

She begins practicing with small things, simple things. The last piece of bao on the tray: it is good bao, and she would eat it if she could, but she does not have to want it—or can, she discovers, want it less than she wants to allow someone else to have it, which works nearly as well. Her place in their internal order, too, is not so hard to give up now and then. Perhaps it does show a wife is respected, to have first choice of the girls sent to dress their hair, or to have one's things attended to first by the palace washerwomen. But the hair will all be dressed, one way or another; the robes and silks and sheets will all get laundered eventually. At first Lao Ma only fails to object when Fei-qian demands first position, but then it occurs to her that she can do better. When the opportunity comes, she surrenders her place to Yi Mei, and is surprised by how _good_ it makes her feel. It is a silly, petty sort of power, Lao Ma thinks, this power to give away—and yet it is perhaps the only kind no one else will ever try to take from her. Surely that is worth something.

Jang sometimes obtains sweets, tipping the eunuchs outrageously with far too many silver taels, and her mood changes like a spring sky: some days she is generous, laughing, but some days she sits back and waits, eats in front of the rest of them and licks the remnants from her fingers until Yi Mei bows and nervously asks for a piece. That, at first, is a more difficult want to set aside, compounded by the conflict between desiring Jang's favor and despising her capriciousness, and Lao Ma struggles with it for a time.

Then the day comes when she realizes that it is not so one-sided as she had believed—this, too, is an exchange. Jang knows what they want and uses it against them, but by doing so shows them what _she_ wants: for them to look at her, for her opinion of them to matter to them, for them to acknowledge that they need to ask. (The fourth-rank wives of His Glorious Highness are told a great deal, served with care and humility, dressed and given allowances and bathed and fed—but so very rarely _asked_.) Once Lao Ma thinks of it this way, it is easy to look at Jang admiringly, to compliment her generosity, to bow and request the gift of a candied fruit—and then turn around and give the fruit to Wu Liao.

 _Everything_ is easy this way, Lao Ma discovers. It is easy to be comfortable, when you have given up wanting not to be uncomfortable; it is easy to be generous, when you have given up wanting to keep things for yourself. It is easy— _so_ easy—to be kind: when there is nothing anyone can take from you that you would not give them, when there is no longer any need to keep things you want from falling into the hands of others, what reason is left to be cruel? Hiding wants is clever, and has worked in some ways for Wu Liao; but learning not to have them at all—slow work though it may be—is better in a way Lao Ma finds difficult to describe. She begins to try: rice paper and brushes, inkstones carved into the shapes of flowers, are available to the fourth-rank wives of His Glorious Highness. Where once she lay in her chamber and shook, she now sits at night with a lantern, or sometimes the full moon when it is clear enough, and attempts to explain to herself the nature of the strange joy she has found.

For it is a joy, and yet also a kind of sorrow. She can see, now, in sudden moments of clarity, that by learning not to want, she is—she is _freeing_ herself, she is somehow beginning to come loose from a trap she had been caught in. And everyone else around her, they are all still caught, and they do not even know it. They want things and it _hurts_ them, whether they get what they want or not, and they feel the hurt but do not know what is causing it, do not know how to make it stop. Even Wu Liao, who wants so much to be safe that she has given up on trust, on closeness—even she is suffering.

And Lao Ma knows it, perceives it, and is herself suffering less and less. What can she do with the suffering of others except try to soothe it?

So Lao Ma offers candied fruits to Wu Liao—who cannot allow herself to be seen asking for them, but can accept and be considered simply polite, if she refuses twice but Lao Ma offers thrice. She bows low to Fei-qian, who always holds her chin so high, who wants so much to be respected. She sits quietly with Yi Mei, reads to her, and now and then plaits her hair with flowers—Yi Mei who is so young, who left behind beloved sisters, who wants so badly to be at ease that she cannot be easy. And Lao Ma lets herself be charmed, when Jang is charming; sorry, sad, subdued, when Jang turns wild and unhappy. It is not difficult: she _is_ sorry. Even when Jang is at her worst, her angriest, her most spiteful—even then, Lao Ma sees, Jang is suffering, and how can she see that and not feel sorrow?

  


* * *

  


They are out in the gardens when it happens. The Garden of Most Surpassing Delight, at the exact moment, having followed the winding path that leads there from the Garden of Earthly Gladness. The fourth-rank wives have been invited to present gifts to the queen, as an early-summer festival in her honor approaches; there is a gleaming jade-and-silver hair ornament tucked away in Lao Ma's sleeve, and Lao Ma is thinking about her papers, her brush, the half-sentence she was called away from: _the need to increase control means control has already been lost; the need to tighten your grasp_ —means your grip is already weak, of course, but Lao Ma did not have time to _write_ it! She will have to try to remember what she intended until they get back—

She is thinking so hard that she does not even hear whatever it is Jang says. She does not even know anything has happened until the sound of a slap is already ringing out through the garden, and by then it is too late.

The noise makes Lao Ma turn, startled. They are on their way to the queen's hall, to deposit their gifts outside—the difference in rank is too great, the queen will surely not receive them, and so in a show of humility they will leave what they have brought without disturbing her. As a consequence, they are passing by one of the garden pavilions belonging to the second-rank wives; so probably it is a second-rank wife who is gazing with such imperious iciness at Jang.

And Jang—Lao Ma feels her chest constrict, a hopeless bittersweet rush of feeling that makes her breath catch. This is how Lao Ma sometimes thinks Jang always looks, inside her own heart: cheek red with the impact of another person's hand, one hairpin knocked askew, a stray lock of hair tumbling loose—and laughing, bitter and breathless, even as her gaze turns dark.

(This, too, Lao Ma thinks, is about wanting. The second-rank wife wants security, wants her superiority honored; she wants it so badly she will hurt Jang to get it, and hurts herself by it: hurts herself by forcing herself to become the kind of person who would hurt another, all to serve her own wants. And Jang—Jang wants to strike out and cannot, except at this woman who does not deserve it, and so she, too, hurts both herself and others. Lao Ma cannot even hate them for it, not when all that is happening is that they are both in pain—)

"Apologize," spits another second-rank wife, from the steps of the pavilion.

Lao Ma closes her eyes for a moment. She can guess how Jang will take that. Even on a good day, Jang would not heed that order, and this is no longer a good day.

Jang looks the woman who slapped her in the eye, and then deliberately away, as though to search the garden for someone. "The noble consort of His Glorious Highness has only to ask," she murmurs, "but I will need paper, a brush—three or four taels for the messenger—"

"What nonsense—?"

"If my apology is to reach its target," Jang says, with studied lightness. "Three or four taels, at least, as compensation for the distance my apology must travel; for I can think of no one any nearer by who merits one."

The wife who slapped Jang goes still; and then, not looking away from Jang, she nods toward the servant at her shoulder. "Bring me a second-rank administrator," she says, soft, and then looks Jang up and down. "And a stave—beech, perhaps. I do not think willow will leave a sufficient impression."

  


*

  


The second-rank administrator is brought, and so is the stave. The administrator does not look horrified, nor even taken aback by the pettiness of the dispute—well, and of course he does not, Lao Ma thinks. His Glorious Highness and King of a Thousand Years has dozens of wives; for all Lao Ma knows, the second-rank administrator standing in front of them now does this three times a day. If he looks anything at all, he perhaps looks—tired. He does not have to be horrified to not want to be here.

Lao Ma looks at him; and at the lifted chin, the flashing eyes, of the insulted second-rank wife; and at Jang, red-cheeked and triumphant and unhappy; and it is as though time stops.

Violence is power, and other people's wants are power—and Lao Ma had thought they were different kinds, but _they are not_. Violence is power because of wanting, too: because of wanting _not_ to have violence done against you, because of wanting not to be hurt. Wu Liao has turned other people's wants into power with her patience, her watchful gaze, her attentiveness; that is what it takes to discover what people _already_ want. How much easier, to create within them a want and take control of it in the same breath: with the knife-edge pressed against the throat, the sword unsheathed! With the beech stave, poised high over the bared back. Even the second-rank administrator does what he does because of this—because if he does not beat Jang, then he himself will be beaten, by some other tired administrator with a stave.

It is—it is _ridiculous_ , ridiculous and yet at the same time so profound a tragedy that Lao Ma cannot laugh. She feels an empathy so strong she nearly weeps instead: for the poor dear unkind second-rank wife, so alone and uncertain, so profoundly afraid of losing what she has that she feels she must respond to Jang's insult this way; and for the second-rank administrator, so weary, who must every day harm both others and himself—who either pains himself by beating Jang, or else has done this so many times that he can do it without being bothered by it, which is a hurt of another kind entirely. And, of course, for Jang, who is so clever and beautiful and angry, who wants so many things so badly and only knows how to get the ones she does not really care about.

Lao Ma steps forward. The second-rank wife looks at her sharply but does not stop her—none of the wives do. She pauses in front of the second-rank wife. Lao Ma wants to touch her hand, her face, to tell her that she is understood—but that cannot happen, and wanting is poison. Lao Ma lets the want go, and bows low instead.

She moves, next, to the administrator. He is a servant to the second-rank wives, but higher than the fourth-rank wives—that is why he is allowed to beat Jang. "I am sure you will carry out your duty with great care and honor," she tells him, sincere, and bows to him also.

Jang is on the ground beside them: kneeling, as she must, with her robes loosened, the collar pulled down and aside in the back to bare her shoulders. She is not looking up at Lao Ma, not listening. Her hands are shaking.

Lao Ma kneels down, facing her, and takes them; and when she does, Jang's gaze snaps to her like a whip. With the help of her paints, her powders, her sly smile, Jang wears a thousand faces every day, but Lao Ma has never seen this one before: open, uncertain.

Lao Ma looks at her and thinks of the scrolls in her room, the things she has written and the truths she has uncovered, and she squeezes Jang's hands and says, "Yield."

Jang's brows draw together, the look in her eyes turning thunderous—

"Yield," Lao Ma murmurs; "that which yields cannot be broken." She presses her palms to Jang's and _wills_ her to understand. "Bend; that which bends cannot be bowed. Let go, and nothing can be taken from you. Do you see, Jang? Let _go_."

Jang's face changes: her brow eases. Her grip on Lao Ma's hands had tightened, resistant, but now it gentles; and Lao Ma has lived in a kingdom at war all her life, she cannot be certain—but Jang looks to her in that moment as though she is at peace.

  


*

  


(Above them, raised high, suspended in the moment before the swing, the stave—untouched, except for the administrator's hand at the base—shudders like a struck gong, and then snaps cleanly in half.)


End file.
